Dirty Projectors with Alarm Will Sound present The Getty Address & Bitte Orca Barbican Centre, London 25/6/10
4/5
By: Liane Escorza
Before heading off to delight the crowds in Glastonbury, Dirty Projectors presented The Getty Address, their 2005 album, accompanied by the Alarm Will Sound orchestra (formed of 15 musicians and conductor Alan Pierson), to a thoroughly fascinated crowd at the Barbican in London.
The Getty Address is the brain-product of David Longstreth, musical centre piece of the band, who wrote and composed it when he was 21. It’s a fabulous and humorous (albeit dark) tale of a young man called Henley, searching for love while embarking in West-meets-East journeys that become dreams, and dreams that become reality until he finds the mysterious Sacagawea in the Wilderness (or shall we say, the mall parking lot), who is the personification and shape of love. Keep up.
What radiates lyrically with extravagant brilliance and random creativity is only a mere whiff of an original display of grandeur. Perfect execution is essential in the conveying of emotions in this piece, as it’s flooded with choral harmonies by the three female members of the band as well as syncopated, urgent and choppy twists of rhythm in the drumming and percussion sections. Ten songs linked by short interludes paste the work together and each one of the tracks represents the internal turmoil of its protagonist.
‘I Sit On The Ridge At Dusk’, the starting track, brings pondering dark drama, words being elongated, strings stretched, drums a piercing component. On ‘Gilt Gold Scabs’ the harmonies move slowly upwards until they turn into uplifting, hopping, tribal tunes which precede ‘Ponds and Puddles’, an almost jubilant howl. ‘Not Having Found’ however, is the one that is closer to defining the (then still foetal) Dirty Projectors sound the most. Henley experiences his first embrace in ‘Jolly Jolly Jolly Ego’, an ecstatic and sexy sonic portrait with sax taking over and soft interweaving harmonies swirling on the background and later drama and despair are provided with ‘Time Birthed Spilled Blood’ with low strings as introductory feature and polyrhythmic beats and finger snapping in-between.
By the time the performance is over, the audience is clapping in awe, jaws dropping in astonishment, all trying to figure out if we breathed some sort of Native American incense that put us to sleep and got us tripping with this Brooklyn sextet.
But if anyone had dared to say that was enough, they were definitely not prepared for the second part, whereby band with their usual instruments in tow and relaxed clothing (after changing from colourful hooded capes) came back onstage to play most of their songs of their last album Bitte Orca. ‘Two Doves’, the melancholic balad of the LP, starts off shyly but soon paced is picked up with the poppy ‘No Intention’, the polysonic ‘Temecula Sunrise’, the intricate title track and the smooth yet catchy RnB of ‘Stillness is the Move’, which puts Amber Coffman as a vocalist on top of a golden pedestal that any judge or contestant in that hideous X-Factor could die for.
In short (since I should spare you the verbal presentation of this two hours and a half recital), if you ever hear of Dirty Projectors passing by your town talking about some finches’ song at an oceanic parking lot, of Warholian wigs or something that seems initially equally as obtuse, do not ignore. Yield, and be held a lot.
Artists in this article: Dirty Projectors, Alarm Will Sound
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